


Sleepovers

by NevillesGran



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, my children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:08:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5694151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two lonely kids cry in the middle of the night and look after each other, and Tarvek figures out how this "friendship" thing works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is also on Tumblr, somewhere. Note that these fit into both canon and every alternate timeline I have, because they're before anything goes wrong. (For extra fun, read this before "Stormcrow", which is also Gil and Tarvek with nightmares and crying - and...more.)

The shadows in the Sturmhalten Palace hallways were dark, looming far beyond anything that could be casting them. _Things_ skittered in them, carapace on cold stone, and something—tendril? Claw? Poison-gloved hand?—reached out to grab Tarvek’s ankles as he sprinted past. If he could just reach the end—he could see it, almost taste it: the lab, the light, bright and safe. He was stumbling as he neared the doorway, nearly falling, clothes torn. Where was Maman? Andy? His Knights? He almost cried out for them, but then others would hear too, and know he was scared. Weak. _Prey_. He crawled the last few steps, just ahead of the crawling, clacking, cutting shadows; a hand reached down and he grabbed it gratefully before he saw the glinting scalpel. His palm gushed more blood than it should really hold and he recoiled, desperate to shout but then they’d _know_. Anevka smiled down at him, eyes too bright like they’d gotten just before he left; the light shone on her blade and in the glow of the beast behind her that he’d thought was the clean white of the lab. The Geister-spider bared its fangs over her head and spoke his name with a hiss like air lost in a vacuum as he stumbled back into the grasping dark, knives and claws scrabbling and stabbing at his legs, his arms his back, burying—

“Tarvek!” His arm shook again and he sprang up, away, pressed his back against the wall, makeshift dagger in a ready position just like he’d been trained. He stared around the room, panting. It was dark, night; hidden space for assailants in the corners by the chair and Andy’s nest. The midmoth was still but snuffling faintly. Alive, safe. Pale light glimmered from the clock on the wall, reading half past three. It reflected just barely in the wide, concerned eyes of the flop-haired boy kneeling by Tarvek’s bed, hand still outstretched. Gil. It was just Gil. No family or assassins or…or bugs.

“You were having a nightmare again,” Gil said softly.

Tarvek forced himself to relax, loosen his grip on his weapon. A jagged scrap of metal pushed into a chunk of plaster wouldn’t stop a warrior wasp anyway, much less a trained Smoke Knight. He tried to breathe evenly.

“Sorry,” he managed eventually.

Gil frowned. “It’s not _your_ fault.” He jumped onto the bed, making Tarvek shift his weight to keep his balance, and leaned his own back against the wall. “What was it about?”

Tarvek slid down until he was sitting too, their shoulders not quite touching. For a moment he wanted to give a real answer. Just in case his dreams would be less terrifying if he talked about them somewhere safe (Castle Wulfenbach, a hostage, but there were no wasps or assassins here, and Madame Von Pinn could beat even a Geister-monster.)

But everything he had nightmares about was either a secret or a vulnerability. Tarvek trusted Gil enough to let him sleep on his floor when bullies booby-trapped Gil’s bed (or sometimes just for fun, like tonight, because it turned out that was an option so long as Von Pinn didn’t catch them.) But he wasn’t sure he could trust Gil with _secrets_ yet.

“Nothing,” he said finally, after a long enough pause that Gil snorted skeptically.

“Well, I’m going to stay on the bed.” Gil scrambled forward to drag Tarvek’s comforter up from the floor, where he’d been using it as a mattress. He flung it over both of them.

Tarvek flinched, still skittish.

Gil bit his lip. “Sorry.”

But he didn’t stop making sure the comforter was tucked around both their feet (all the other sheets and blankets were twisted up from Tarvek’s nightmare), and wriggling until he’d found a suitably comfortable position in which to curl up, lean his head against Tarvek’s stiff shoulder, and close his eyes again. Another couple minutes and his slow, steady breathing whispered sleep through the room.

Tarvek stared at his friend’s mess of hair in vague bewilderment. Of course, _Gil_ didn’t have nightmares. Tarvek knew how much it messed up Gil’s life every day that he didn’t have a family, but as far as Tarvek could tell, it also meant Gil didn’t have _anything_ to be afraid of. He could just…fall asleep, relying on someone else to be a pillow, as warm and relaxed and careless as the midmoth snoring softly across the room. Even when he _knew_ Tarvek was holding a weapon.

That was another reason not to explain the nightmares. Some things it just wasn’t _fair_ to share.

Tarvek poked his friend gently in the ribs.

“Hey,” he whispered when Gil raised his head. He stuffed his makeshift blade back under his pillow. “It’ll be easier to sleep if we’re lying down. The bed’s probably wide enough.”

“Alright.”

Tarvek slipped out from under the comforter and began untangling all the sheets he’d twisted together when he was having a nightmare. “Would you rather be on the inside or the outside?”

“I don’t know,” Gil yawned. “Do you want an easy escape route or your back to the wall again?”

Tarvek glanced sharply at his friend, who was too smart sometimes. But there was no guile in Gil, no _I-see-you_ threat. Just…asking.

“Escape route,” Tarvek admitted, then rephrased it: “You can watch my back.”

“Duh,” said Gil, and lay down pretty much where he was. He patted the mattress in front of him. “Come on, Madame Von Pinn will notice if you’re falling asleep all tomorrow.”

Tarvek had more self-control than _that_. Anyway, they’d both been up at night for much longer before without getting caught. But he could feel Gil’s yawn being contagious, and the nightmare losing its adrenaline-grip on his muscles. He could probably sleep again without dreaming too badly, tonight at least.

Gil still dropped off first, as usual. And sprawled out until he was taking up distinctly more than half the width of the bed. But, curled up against his side (the alternative was falling off the bed), Tarvek soon followed suit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that Tarvek gets the bed despite being in Gil's room because he's a special royal snowflake who doesn't fall asleep easily even when he doesn't have a mattress, whereas Gil is a possibly-common-as-dirt;-we-don't-know cinnamon bun who a) is okay with giving up his bed for his (only) friend and b) could probably fall asleep in a prickling blackberry bush, or tied upside-down on a tilted laboratory slab or something.

Tarvek was a light sleeper, trained to dodge assassins without a second thought. It didn’t take more than half a choked sob from Gil to snap him awake. Another moment to assess his surroundings: Wulfenbach dorm, Gil's room, not his, but exact same layout; dark but not pitch; no threat in sight. Soft whimpers from the makeshift bed beside his own, where they’d dragged most of Tarvek's own blankets in from across the hall tonight.

Tentatively, Tarvek squirmed forward to look over the edge of the bed. “Gil?”

Gil was barely visible, covered in blankets up to his neck and face buried in a pillow he was clutching with both arms. “Yeah?” 

“Did you, um, have a nightmare?”

“No.” 

Gil’s voice was muffled by the pillow, but Tarvek could hear the watery thickness in it. He tapped his fingers uncertainly on the mattress. He had a lot of experience with nightmares, but not from this side.

“Do you…want to talk about it?” Gil always asked if Tarvek wanted to talk about it, the only one who ever had. Tarvek never did, but maybe this was what you were supposed to do.

Gil rolled over, keeping the pillow pressed against his face. “No.”

“Oh- okay.” He lay back, and pulled his covers up from where he’d shoved them automatically away for freedom of movement. 

But that didn’t feel like enough. Tarvek sat up. “Do you want to-”

Gil sat up at the same time, letting the pillow drop from his face. The dim light from the clock on the wall picked out tear tracks on his cheeks. “Do you ever-” 

They both stopped, staring at each other in the near-dark. 

Tarvek went first. He curled in his legs and patted the empty bed space. “Do you want to come sleep up here?”

Gil nodded, and abandoned his blanket to the floor - though he kept the pillow. They shuffled around until they were both sitting against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, Tarvek’s covers tenting over their bent knees. It was standard post-nightmare procedure, except usually Tarvek was the one crying, and Gil the one offering to sit close. 

“So...” Tarvek said hesitantly. Sometimes Gil asked him again what was wrong (sometimes Tarvek even gave vague approximations - darkness, monsters. Normal things to be afraid of.) Sometimes he just started talking, about something completely irrelevant and distracting that pulled Tarvek’s mind away from the shivers down his spine. Gil seemed to just _know_ which one was best on any night. Tarvek had no idea how. Gil wasn’t shivering, wasn’t even crying much. Didn’t have ghosts or Goddesses or family to fear.

But his voice was tight with muffled sobs and despair as he leaned against Tarvek’s shoulder, hugging the pillow to his chest. “Do you ever have dreams that are so real they seem like memories and then when you wake up you realize that you woke up and that means they must have just been dreams? Even if you’ve had the same ones before?” 

Tarvek had had repeat nightmares before, but that wasn’t what Gil was talking about. 

“I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “But maybe, if they happen more than once, they really are memories? Like your sleeping brain can remember them, but your awake brain is too busy so they only happen in dreams.”

It seemed to be the right answer, because Gil nestled closer, sighing the sort of shaky sigh you give when you’re tears are almost all out. 

Tarvek extracted his arm from between them and carefully put it around Gil’s thin shoulders. He was perfectly well-fed but he was always small somehow, like the lack of family left was matched by missing heft to his bones. But he didn’t flinch like Tarvek would have if someone casually move right behind his back. 

“What was the memory about?” 

Gil sniffled, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Just...someone holding me. Against their chest. And running.” He wiped his nose again, up, as if that would make the snot go away. Tarvek resisted the urge to pull away, if only to get a handkerchief from the nightstand.

“They were big,” Gil continued softly. “I guess I was small, but I think they were big. And they were holding me and we were running from something but I wasn’t scared.”

Tarvek squeezed him gently closer, because that was what Gil did when Tarvek talked about anything, and because it felt like the right thing to do. More because it felt right. He wasn’t surprised to learn Gil didn’t have proper nightmares, but he didn’t begrudge it, and he could imagine how it would hurt, enough to cry, to wake up from a dream like that. To wake up alone and not held and not in danger but also not _safe_. Tarvek knew what it was like to not (never) be really _safe_. 

“Well I’m here now,” he said, more in response to his own thoughts than anything Gil had said.

Gil hiccoughed at his imperious tone, almost like a laugh. 

Tarvek had been trying to be serious, but laughing was good, much better than crying. He put on a grin. “Yeah! Who needs parents anyway? I’ll be your parent.” He lunged forward, pulling his arm away from Gil’s shoulders and disrupting all the blankets, and came back with a handkerchief. He shoved it in his friend’s face. 

“Here,” he said, as Maman-like as he could. He even put on the French accent. “Blow your nose properly.”

Gil shoved the handkerchief back at him, cheeks still wet but now split with the start of his own smile. “Madame Von Pinn already says that all the time. And you can’t be a parent anyway. You’re the same age as me.” 

“Can too,” Tarvek countered, with all the pomposity of centuries of royal lineage. He pulled the blankets back up over them both. “If I want. That’s why I’m so good at bedtime stories.”

Though bedtime stories had never been a parent thing in his household, except when he was so little he barely remembered. But he knew they were supposed to be. And this was the Distraction stage of the Post-Nightmare Procedures. Tarvek knew how it went.

Gil groaned, quietly because there were people sleeping in the next rooms over, and not very heartfeltly anyway. He belied it completely by tucking the pillow behind his head and slipping down the wall to be more covered in the blanket. “Not the-”

“It’s a story about the Storm King,” Tarvek said ruthlessly, grinning for real at Gil’s second fake groan, and the way he flung one arm over his eyes. He never _really_ objected. Nobody else had ever told him fairy tales before bed - and nobody else would ever listen to Tarvek tell them, except his baby cousin who had to do what he said. And she was too little to understand much anyway.

He decided this was a night to be reckless. Gil didn’t know to suspect anything anyways, and Tarvek didn’t like the sound of despair in his voice. A promise that wasn’t said and even the recipient didn’t know about could still be a promise.

“This is a story about the Storm King and van Rijn,” Tarvek began, “who was actually a commoner, but a well-raised one. His family was rich and of course he was the strongest spark ever. And he and Valois were best friends, and went with the Muses on tons of amazing adventures together...”


End file.
